by Nevil Shute
Every wood and spinney in the district became a dump for stores and ammunition or a parking place for tanks and motor transport. With these came mobile antiaircraft defence, so that at times it seemed that every hedge and thicket held a Bofors gun in camouflage. But no German aircraft ever appeared by day after the JU. 188 that Janet had shot down; our fighters saw to that. Southampton, where over a thousand landing craft were congregated, suffered a few light raids at night which were beaten off with heavy losses; already the Luftwaffe was growing impotent.
The LCT’s came crowding in to the river now; at one time, Viola told me, there were over seventy of them there. Training and fitting out had been hurried, and in many cases the maintenance of ships and guns was poor in the hands of raw, unseasoned crews. The work of the shore staffs grew very heavy; as the days lengthened with the coming of the summer the girls found themselves working sixteen or seventeen hours a day, from dawn till dusk. From time to time the river emptied and the LCT’s all sailed away on training exercises, to load tanks and mobile guns and trucks and wading bulldozers at one or other of the hards. They would be gone for two or three days, away down to Slapton sands in Devonshire perhaps, to assault the peaceful countryside with live shells and rocket bombs, and go through all the motions of a landing on the beaches they had devastated. Then they would come back again, more numerous than ever, crowding in to Beaulieu River and every other river on the south coast of England with a host of defects and deficiencies to be put right.
Through May the sun shone and the ground grew harder after winter rains. The knowledgeable whispered together that the ground was hard enough for tanks to operate, the more knowledgeable whispered back that it wasn’t, but both agreed that the balloon would go up very soon. Nobody ever spoke the word invasion, and Overlord was whispered very secretly.
In the last fortnight the work massed up upon the girls to a degree that they had now no leisure time at all, and the sense of tension was so great that they had no desire for leisure. On shore the roads were jammed with tanks and Priests and motor transport; every lane was lined with them along one side, their crews bivouacking in the vehicles or underneath them or beside them; there were little cooking fires and khaki figures everywhere. Each new airstrip was crowded with fighters in dispersal in the fields beside it, the pilots and the crews living in tents by the strip. At sea, monstrosities of every sort floated in the Solent, long raftlike things proceeding very slowly under their own power, tall spiky things, things like a block of flats afloat upon the startled sea.
Janet spent most of her time at Lepe Hard, two miles from Mastodon, for the time for major exercises was now over and the ships were all engaged in loading, unloading, and refuelling practice on the hards. It was her duty to be there when they were doing that, because when the balloon went up she would become a part of the Hardmaster’s team. Her job would be to go on board the LCT’s when they came back from France to load up a fresh cargo of tanks or motor transport, to check the ammunition that had been expended and exchange the empty drums for new, full ones that she had loaded on shore, and clean the guns for the tired crews, and make good what deficiencies there might be, all in half an hour while loading and refuelling took place before the craft backed off the hard to sail for France again. To get through all the jobs she had to do in that short time demanded practice and rehearsals, and in those last few days she went through these rehearsals with every LCT in Beaulieu River.
“The captains all knew her,” Viola told me. “They knew she’d just lost her boy, and I think they liked her because she went on with her job the same as ever.” Through all her private troubles she had gone on just the same, the competent Leading Wren explaining once again to raw, forgetful ratings the meaning of the different colours on the Oerlikon shells and the order in which they should be loaded in the drums, sitting on the deck and working with them with her sleeves rolled up and her hands in a wet mess of grease. “They had confidence in her,” Viola said. “I think they felt that if she didn’t fold up when her boy was killed, she wouldn’t fold when the balloon went up.”
Viola told me that she asked Janet once about her father. “Is he really going to the party?”
Janet nodded. “He’s finished his training. I got a letter from him yesterday, posted at Wapping. He’s got a ship, but he didn’t say what her name was. I suppose he wouldn’t be allowed to.”
“Good show. How old did you say he was?”
“Sixty-four. He said in the letter that the sailors are terribly ignorant about aeroplanes. He said that none of them could tell a Focke-Wulf 190 from a Thunderbolt even when he pointed out the differences in the pictures.”
“I’m sure I couldn’t, either,” said Viola.
“Daddy thinks it’s just terrible. He telegraphed to Mummy to come up to London and bring him up his epidiascope and slides, and he rigged it all up in the ship and started giving lectures to the crew. He says they’re really quite keen on identification now. He makes them identify every aircraft they see flying over.”
“He must be very keen himself.”
“It’s his whole life,” said Janet simply. “He’s been like this about the Observer Corps ever since he joined it at the beginning of the war. Going with the party to the other side is a sort of a reward to him, for all the work he’s done in the Observer Corps since war began. That’s how he looks at it.”
At the end of May Janet was transferred on to the Hardmaster’s staff, which did not mean a move because the hard was only two miles from Mastodon; she was driven down there in a truck each morning and driven back at night. She moved freely from one base to the other in the boats, too, but now her main duty was upon the hard and she reported back to Lepe whenever she was disengaged.
On Saturday June the 3rd all the LCT’s were sailed out of the Beaulieu River and anchored by the stern with their own anchors in the Solent. That afternoon they began coming in in pairs to the hard to load up tanks and Priests and motor transport; in the mysterious way in which these things become known in spite of all security, everybody knew that this was it. Janet went through her drill of going on board the craft as they came in and reporting to the No. 1, but she had little to do. The crews of the LCT’s were all set now for battle; the time for worrying about minor stores deficiencies or rust upon the guns was over. She could have given them anything they wanted on that day without paper work or requisitions, but they wanted little from her. All day she walked from ship to ship upon the cluttered decks in the roar of the tank engines, dodging the men bowsing down securing tackles, chi-hiking sometimes with anxious soldiers uttering strained pleasantries. All day through, the loaded vessels backed away in turn from the hard, and went out into the Solent to anchor in flotillas.
The cutter came down river in the middle of the afternoon with Viola Dawson at the helm and Dev standing proudly in the bow. Viola told me that she had taken to looking after the dog in the daytime since Janet was at Lepe all day; he was accustomed to boats and gave the boat’s crew Wrens no trouble. Janet crossed an LCT to speak to them as they lay alongside for a few minutes while some equipment for the Hardmaster was unloaded. She climbed down into the cutter.
Viola said, “This is it, isn’t it?”
Janet nodded. “Everybody seems to think so. It’s different, too. Look at all the stuff they’re taking with them.” The Priest she indicated was loaded high with ration boxes and camouflage netting. On its side was chalked the legend, “Look out Hitler.” “This is it, all right.”
Doris Smith looked at the massed vehicles moving by inches down to the hard, at the helmeted soldiers, and voiced all their thoughts. “I wish one could do something more,” she said. “One ought to be able to.”
Janet said, “There’ll be plenty to do when these start coming back for another load.” She bent and fondled Dev’s ears.
She went on all that afternoon and evening visiting the LCT’s as they loaded. Food came to the Hardmaster’s hut from time to time, dixies of tea and thic
k meat sandwiches and biscuits and jam; as the evening went on Janet went and foraged for any food that happened to be going at the moment when she was free. The loading went on till seven o’clock when it was suspended for a time by the low tide; at dead low water it was difficult for landing craft to manoeuver in the narrow river on to that hard. It began again at half past eight and went on uninterrupted as night fell; floodlights were lit and the landing craft continued to come in to the hard, load up with tired soldiers and their vehicles, and back away again.
By midnight Janet was tired out, but there was no respite for men or Wrens. She had done enough during the day to justify her presence on the hard; she had replaced two damaged ring sights, supplied about five hundred rounds of ammunition for the Oerlikons, and a large quantity for the Sten guns. She had helped the gun crew of a Priest by giving them a can of grease and a great armful of cotton waste. Much of her day had been spent in futile walks from ship to ship, trying to locate the officer she had to report to and finding in the end that nothing was required.
Loading finished at about two in the morning, when the last LCT of the first assault backed off the hard and the floodlights were doused immediately to screen the hard from any German aircraft that might venture over in the night. There was no transport to Mastodon because the crowded vehicles upon the roads prevented any traffic backwards from the hard. Janet and May Spikins wrapped themselves in their duffle coats and lay down on a pile of camouflage nets, and slept a little. There Doris Smith found them at five in the morning, and woke them up, and took them back up river to the pier; they walked wearily to their quarters and turned in at six in the full light of day.
Janet got out of her bunk at ten o’clock, and Viola got up with her. Outside the Wrennery the sky was overcast and grey, and the wind was rising, whipping the tops of the tall elm trees. They stood at the window in pyjamas, looking at the weather in consternation. Viola said, “It’s going to be a pig of a day.” And then she dropped her voice. “They can’t go in this, surely?”
Janet asked in a low tone, “When do they go — when is it? Do you know?”
Viola whispered, “I think it’s tomorrow morning. They’re supposed to sail this evening. But half of them will get swamped if they go out in this. It must be blowing quite hard in the Channel.”
They dressed and got some breakfast; then Janet set out in her duffle coat to walk down to the hard. She got a lift in a small Army truck and reached the hard at about eleven in the morning. It was a dirty grey day with a stiff westerly wind; out in the Solent the LCT’s were anchored by the stern in rows, pitching uneasily in a short, breaking sea. One or two of them had dragged and fouled each other, and were struggling to free themselves and to turn back against the wind to regain their berth. She found the Hardmaster and reported to him. “I hope I’m not late, sir,” she said. “You didn’t say any time.”
“That’s all right,” he replied. “You might have stayed in bed. It’s been postponed for twenty-four hours. They’d never have got across in this.”
She stayed down at the hard for a couple of hours and had her dinner with the Wrens in Lepe House, but there was nothing for her to do. The Hardmaster released her for the day then, warning her to stay on call in Mastodon, and she walked back to the great house that was her ship. Back in her quarters she felt tired and strained; she took off some of her clothes and lay down in her bunk, and slept uneasily for a time. At about five o’clock she got up and went and found Dev in his kennel, and got his supper for him from the galley and sat and watched him eat it; then she got her clothes brush from her quarters and gave him a grooming with it, not before time. It was better to do that than to sit about in tension, thinking of the battle that was coming.
That night when she went to bed there was half a gale blowing, with squally, driving rain. Few of the Wrens in Janet’s hut slept much that night; all were young, and most of them had boy friends, fiancés, or even husbands in the LCT’s that lay tossing and dragging their anchors in the black night in the Solent. They lay listening to the wind and to the rain beating on the window, thinking of their men wet and cold and in some danger, struggling to keep their loaded, cranky ships afloat until the weather moderated enough for them to sail across to France to battle with the Germans on the beaches on the other side.
All night Janet tried to sleep, but sleep eluded her till just before dawn. She was sick with a great apprehension, with fear of what was coming. She was seized with the presage of a huge, impending disaster. She did not worry much about her father; it was clear to her that the merchant ships would not be brought to the invaded coast until the enemy had been driven well back inland. She was filled more with a dread that the whole enterprise would fail and end in a shambles of defeat upon the beaches. Mixed up with this was a sick memory of the Germans she had killed in the JU. 188, the smashed bodies that she had seen lying in the field where she had shot them down, men who were friendly to us, on our side. A great sense of guilt lay heavily upon her which was to remain with her, I think, until she died, and over all was the memory of Bill, my brother, who had loved her, whom she would have married, who had vanished without trace out of her life having only the bare word that he was dead. She had killed seven friendly Germans wantonly and so Bill had been taken from her, because Judgment was inexorable.
She slept a little before dawn, a restless, nightmarish, unhappy sleep.
When the petty officer roused out the hut the sun was breaking through the clouds; at breakfast it was evident that the wind was falling. Janet went down to the hard and reported to her officer; he told her that the indications were that the operation was laid on for the next morning, June the 6th. He employed her on a variety of minor jobs in the forenoon and at lunch time he dismissed her for the day; there would be plenty for her to do when the landing craft came back from France to reload.
In the evening Janet went down river in the cutter with Viola Dawson and Doris Smith to embark a party of RN officers at Lepe and to take them across the Solent to Cowes. She had no business to be in the boat upon a trip like that; it was a joyride for her, but she had become so used to going up and down the river in the boats by that time that she ranked practically as one of the boat’s crew. The officers were mostly of commander’s rank; she did not know it, but these were the headquarters naval staff of Juno sector, changing ship. They were serious-faced, silent men. They crossed to Cowes in the sunset and one of them directed Viola to an unpretentious steamer called Hilary lying in the roads, studded all over with radio and radar aerials. Hilary had been the headquarters ship at the invasion of Sicily and at Salerno, and now she was to serve the same function at Juno beach of Overlord.
They turned back to Beaulieu as the sun was going down, and now they saw the whole fleet getting under way. The whole stretch of water between the Isle of Wight and the mainland was crowded with landing craft and ships of every sort, and all in turn were getting short their anchors, weighing, and moving off. In the deep channels were the Infantry Landing Ships, cross channel steamers and small liners with landing craft handing on their davits; in the shallows were the LCT’s loaded with vehicles and tanks and men, moving off towards the eastern entrance at Spithead in great flotillas, shepherded by their ML’s. Coming down Southampton Water was a great fleet of Tank Landing Ships, big American vessels with a double door that opened in the bow. Overhead the fighters circled in the evening light, the inner patrol positioned to catch any German aircraft that penetrated the outer guard of fighters over the Channel. The evening was thunderous with the roar of engines on the sea and overhead.
Viola slowed the cutter to half speed and they lingered over the return to Beaulieu, silent and wondering, conscious that they were looking at a mass of ships that nobody might ever see again assembled in one place. Viola told me that she tried to count the ships that were in sight that evening; she counted over four hundred and then failed to separate the hulls massed together in the east down by Spithead. Gradually as they crossed the Sole
nt, weaving in and out between the landing craft, the western Solent cleared. The craft that had been lying between Lymington and Beaulieu passed them going to the east, and by the time they reached the river entrance there were few left to the westward. The girls stood talking in half whispers as the cutter steamed up river, as if to speak out loud of what they had just seen would break security and put the men in peril.
In the Wrennery it was another sleepless night. Aircraft were passing overhead all night hindering the restless girls from any sleep they might have got; if drowsiness came through the sheer weariness of anxiety a wave of bombers from some aerodrome nearby would pass over, climbing in fine pitch, and they would be wide awake again. They were too young to have acquired a knowledge or the habit of sedatives, too much accustomed to a healthy life, too little used to feminine megrims. Through most of the night one or two of them were out of bed, whispering together. Towards dawn a little knot of them in pyjamas collected at the open door, listening in the quiet of the summer night. Far to the south beyond the Isle of Wight the faint reverberations of explosions came a hundred miles over the sea; they stood there, tense and cold and rather sick, listening to the distant echoes of the bombardment.
One of the signal Wrens from Lepe House whispered, “The airborne party go in about now . . .”
Janet got practically no sleep at all that night. The tension in the Wrennery was contagious, and for forty-eight hours now she had had little to do. Before, the work had been continuous and exacting since she had shot down the Junkers, since Bill had been killed, and had given her little time for thought; she had slept well every night in an exhaustion of fatigue. Now in her idleness and tension the sense of guilt was heavy on her. She had killed seven men who were not Germans, but Poles and Czechs, trying to escape to fight upon our side. She had smashed them into the pathetic, sodden, mutilated things she had seen lying in the field. She had done that in her pride and folly, for she had seen the wheels come down and had been so exultant in her skill with the Oerlikon that she had not paused to consider what that meant. God was a just God, and she must take her punishment. He had taken Bill from her to Himself as a judgment for what she had done, but was that punishment enough? Perhaps there was more coming, for she had murdered seven friendly men and Bill was only one. One life could not atone for seven. Perhaps she had made some terrible mistake that would kill six more of her friends. Perhaps a ready-use ammunition locker on the deck of some craft she had tended would explode and kill six of her friends through some mistake that she had made, because God was a just God, and His judgment was inexorable. She racked her brains to think what her mistake could be.
